The web is littered with full-blown JavaScript libraries who say they will save your day and make your web development life much easier. You get encouraged to include these â€œmere 80 KBâ€ libraries that is supposed to be the solution to all your needs, and practically make the web site work by itself. Needless to say, Iâ€™m not a big follower of JavaScript libraries,, especially since they almost always include lots of superfluous code, so I thought Iâ€™d put together a tiny library with only essential JavaScript functions.

Not for nothing, but…absolutely none of those methods are “essential”, and what’s worse is that they really aren’t “JS”. A better name would be “DOMEssentials”, since they all deal with DOM manipulation. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to use a library that’s already out there, but I do think that there’s something wrong with creating libraries for the sake of creating libraries. I’m with Joyce Park on this: why do web developers always want to create “the One”?
I get tired of saying it but there’s a lot more to JS than just a browser environment.

I’m Robert Nyman, author of the library. Regarding essential: it is all in the eye in the beholder. Some people want large libraries with lots of functionality and others just want the core functionality.

And as is mentioned several times by me in the comments, the name is ironic; no library can be the library that solves any problem and caters to any need.

The library in this case consists of functions that are essential in the sense that no matter the web site and interaction you’re going to use, these will be the core functions making it happen. To me, they are very useful and therefore I packaged them for anyone’s who’s interested for their convenience, that’s all. :-)

Just my preference, but I like libraries that let you keep native JS syntax like YUI. I don’t even like $. This is the opinion of most of the developers on comp.lang.javascript too. I’m sure the Prototype crowd will appreciate this library though.